No matter how you add it up, Sandoval was a flop

Saturday

It remembers Jack Clark and Carl Crawford, Edgar Renteria and Eric Gagne. But of all the high-profile disappointments with the Red Sox, Pablo Sandoval may go down as the biggest.

Signed after winning his third World Series with San Francisco, Sandoval never looked like the player who had become known for his postseason heroics while with the Giants. He was one of the game's worst everyday players in 2015, he missed nearly all of 2016 after losing his job in spring training to Travis Shaw, and he couldn’t hold down third base this season despite a lack of internal competition.

In 161 games with Boston, Sandoval hit .237 with a .286 on-base percentage. His OPS was .646 with 14 home runs. Worse even than the offensive regression was his defensive downfall. After grading out as an average to above-average defender in San Francisco, Sandoval ranked as one of the game's worst third basemen over the last three seasons, according to Fangraphs, charged with costing Boston 18 runs with his glove.

Was Sandoval the worst free-agent signing in Red Sox history? How about major-league history?

We'll take two approaches, using wins above replacements (WAR) and dollars per WAR according to Fangraphs.

(Here's how that works: Currently, a single win above replacement costs about $8 million on the free-agent market. A player who has produced four wins above replacement this season — Mookie Betts has already passed that number — has thus been worth about $32 million to his team. How much a single win above replacement costs has inflated over time, alongside salaries. It has basically doubled since 2002.)

First, let's judge it by gross value. How much value does a player produce on the field compared to how much money he was paid?

Our sample comprises the 78 players who signed contracts of at least $90 million in baseball history, dating back to Kevin Brown and Mike Piazza before the 1999 season. We calculated how much each player produced on the field during the intended life of the contract, measuring the value in Fangraphs' dollars per win above replacement.

We ranked those 78 players, subtracting the amount they were paid from what they had produced on the field. In the sample, 36 players have lived up to their contracts and generated surplus value, topped by Albert Pujols' original seven-year, $100-million deal with the Cardinals. Pujols provided about $300 million in terms of on-field production, a surplus of $200 million for St. Louis.

Miguel Cabrera's initial extension with the Tigers (eight years, $152 million) and Mike Trout's current deal with the Angels (six years, $144.5 million) round out the top three.

Thirty-six players haven't contributed enough on the field to match their contracts. This includes names like Manny Ramirez, who was worth $150 million of the $160 million Boston signed him for, falling short because of his defensive flaws, and Ken Griffey Jr. in Cincinnati.

After his designation Friday, Sandoval ranks 76th on the list, with Boston having paid $95 million to receive roughly negative-$22 million in value on the field. He's thus cost Boston close to $117 million. He's even slipped just beneath Carl Crawford, who now sits 75th after providing only $40 million of value compared to his $142 million salary for the Sox and Dodgers.

What makes Sandoval really stand out is his negative on-field value. Of all 78 players, he has been the least valuable on the field. Only he and Ryan Howard have compiled negative wins above replacement during their contracts, and Sandoval has been about a half-win worse than Howard was during his five-year deal in Philadelphia. Howard, for his part, had seasons in which he contributed positively, whereas Sandoval accumulated negative WAR in each season with Boston.

The only two contracts Sandoval ranks ahead of are Alex Rodriguez's second deal with the Yankees and Howard's extension with the Phillies.

What prevents Sandoval from ranking lower is the relatively modest size of his contract — $95 million isn't quite so large next to Rodriguez's $275 million.

A second way to look at it is by the number of wins above replacement contributed to the team per-dollar spent. And with this perspective, Sandoval ranks as the worst big-money contract of all time. Whereas Rodriguez contributed 0.08 wins for every $1 million dollars the Yankees spent on him, Sandoval was worth negative-0.03 wins per $1 million Boston gave him.

"I need a new challenge," Sandoval said the day the Red Sox introduced him back in November 2014.

This one clearly proved too tall.

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